The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In the oil and gas drilling and production industry, viscous aqueous fluids are commonly used in treating subterranean wells, as well as carrier fluids. Such fluids may be used as fracturing fluids, acidizing fluids, and high-density completion fluids. In an operation known as well fracturing, such fluids are used to initiate and propagate underground fractures for increasing petroleum productivity.
Viscous fluids, such as gels, are typically an aqueous solution of a polymer material. Such fluids can also contain other additives such as fibers, fluid loss additives (FLAs), and breakers. Currently, the process for feeding such additives (for example fiber) is manually intensive, requiring an operator to open bulk bags of the additive over a feeder (such as a screw feeder) for feeding into a mixer for introduction of the additive into the treatment fluid. The material itself can be challenging to feed owing to its high aspect ratio in the case of fibers, or the small particle diameters in the case of powders like FLAs or breakers. Consequently, such a manual feeding technique results in a lack of consistent control of the rate of additive addition.
Therefore, there is a need for efficient systems and methods useful for feeding additives to a treatment fluid which are less dependent on operator activity, and are less influenced by the physical properties of the particles, such need met, at least in part, by the following disclosure.